Friday, September 23, 2016

Being sincerely motivated doesn't make it right

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson Mail, September 21).

The International Film Festival has done the rounds of the
provinces for another year. Normally I would seize the chance to binge on
movies of the type that don’t usually make it to the town where I live, but this
year I managed to see only one: a New Zealand documentary called The 5th Eye.

You’ll be familiar with the subject matter. The three
central characters sabotaged a satellite dish at the Waihopai electronic spy
facility in 2008.

They were a distinctly unworldly trio, driven by their
fervent commitment to a Catholic peace movement called Swords into Ploughshares.

The Waihopai Three were convinced that innocent people were
dying – in Iraq, especially – as a result of Waihopai’s inclusion in an
international network of Western spy bases operating under an alliance known as
Five Eyes.

The saboteurs used this as justification for slashing an
inflatable plastic dome with a sickle. According to the government, the repair
bill came to $1.2 million

Using the Waihopai saboteurs as its anchor point, The 5th Eye built an
elaborate case implicating New Zealand in a sinister international conspiracy
to spy on people and to use the information obtained to kill and wage unjust war
– all in the political and economic interests of America.

It’s a skilfully crafted propaganda film that owes a lot to
the techniques of the left-wing American documentary maker Michael Moore.

I suspect I was a minority of one in the audience. While
most of the people around me obviously saw the Waihopai Three as heroes, I
regarded the men as zealots, so convinced of the righteousness of their cause
that they considered themselves above the law.

But here’s an admission: I came away with a more charitable
view of the saboteurs. I had always
accepted that they were sincerely motivated. What I wasn’t prepared for was
that they were such a likeable bunch of bumblers. There was something almost
endearing in the amateurish way they went about their act of vandalism.

I’ve no doubt that their religious motivation, their
implacable belief that they were doing God’s work and their disarming candour
helped persuade a jury to acquit them of burglary and wilful damage charges.

At the time, the verdict made no sense. The satellite dish
had been vandalised and they admitted they were responsible. How could they
possibly get off? They admitted they expected to go to jail. Around the court
it became known as the “No-hopai” case.

But the dynamics of the court room can produce strange
outcomes. The quiet conviction of the men’s testimony and the passionate
advocacy of their defence counsel resulted in the jury accepting the novel
argument that because the men believed the satellite dish was the cause of
human suffering, their action was lawful.

As far as I know, they have never paid any penalty for what
Helen Clark, who was prime minister at the time, accurately described as an act of
criminal vandalism.

Where The 5th
Eye succeeds as a piece of propaganda is that having captured the
audience’s sympathy for these religiously motivated men, it uses that sympathy to
provide a platform for a parade of familiar left-wing activists – Nicky Hager,
Murray Horton, John Minto, Laila Harre, Keith Locke, Jane Kelsey, even Julian
Assange – whose objectives are strictly ideological and political rather than spiritual.

I got the unsettling feeling that the three protagonists had
been exploited in the pursuit of a more secular agenda – anti-West,
anti-capitalism – than the one they perhaps had in mind.

I also noted that while The
5th Eye played heavily on claims that the Five Eyes alliance
kills innocent people, it was silent on the flip side of that argument –
namely, that electronic surveillance is a means of thwarting terrorist acts. These kill
innocent people too.

Am I saying we should trust the government and its
intelligence agencies always to act in our best interests on matters of
security and surveillance? Not at all. Their record is decidedly dodgy, as the
documentary makes clear – but I’m suspicious of the motives of their left-wing
critics too.

In any case, for me the film ultimately fails on a very
basic premise. Being sincerely motivated doesn’t entitle people to take the law
into their own hands.

Let’s imagine, for argument’s sake, that people who feel
strongly about abortion (as many do) used that belief as justification to burn
down an abortion clinic. The left – the same people who have anointed the
Waihopai saboteurs as heroes – would be incandescent with rage. But what’s the
difference?

That remains the problem with the Waihopai Three. For all
their apparent humility, there remains an underlying conceit that their beliefs, presumably being
sanctioned by God (at least in their minds) entitle them to do whatever they
think is right.

But civil society can function only if people respect
democratic institutions and the rule of law. If they don’t like the status quo,
there’s a way to change things: via the ballot box.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.